U.S. government shatters Ottawa woman's professional life, then quietly recants allegations

Vito Pilieci

Published on: March 5, 2018 | Last Updated: March 5, 2018 1:01 PM EST

A year and a half ago, the U.S. government officials accused Marie Boivin and 11 others, along with 24 organizations, of participating in a global fraud. Last August, all were removed from the U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions list.Tony Caldwell / Postmedia Network

Marie Boivin was sitting at a Starbucks a year and a half ago when she got a call from her accountant.

“He said to me, ‘You have to turn on CNN,’” she recalled. “‘It’s bad. It’s really bad.’”

Then-U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch was standing at a podium before dozens of TV cameras, making allegations about a number of individuals, including Boivin, who was then chair of the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce and director of Ottawa currency exchange business Accu-Rate Corp.

The allegations of that day — Sept. 22, 2016 — would tear through Boivin’s life like a “bulldozer”, she says.

With Lynch was John Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control with the U.S. Department of the Treasury. They had a long list of allegations, stemming from a multi-agency investigation led by the Justice Department.

Their target? Mail-based sweepstakes scams.

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Such schemes send millions of letters to Americans annually telling them they’ve won some sort of prize — money or items, such as a house or a car. To claim the prize, recipients are told to send a cheque to cover “processing costs” or other fees. The trick is, few prizes are ever awarded.

“Every year, fraudulent mail schemes target millions of Americans with false promises of wealth and riches, swindling hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens,” said Lynch. “Today’s actions send a clear message that the Department of Justice is determined to hold the perpetrators of these harmful schemes accountable.”

At the heart of the accusations that day was a payment processing company, based in Vancouver, called PacNet Group. Government officials alleged that fraudsters were using PacNet to process payments duped Americans had sent. Authorities were going after that company and other businesses using PacNet’s services. One of those it accused of wrongdoing was Boivin’s Ottawa company, Accu-Rate.

The U.S. government officials accused Boivin, 11 other individuals and 24 organizations.

“This fraud is massive in scale,” Lynch said. “It is global in scope and it can be devastating on an individual level. The schemes involve a complicated web of actors located across the world. … The companies and the individuals named in these actions operated different parts of mass mailing fraud schemes in different parts of the world. But, they all acted with the same malicious intent to take advantage of elderly individuals and other vulnerable citizens.”

How serious were these accusations? Boivin and her Ottawa currency exchange were added to a list of Specially Designated Nationals, a list that includes “individuals, groups and entities, such as terrorists and narcotics traffickers” as well as state actors and governments of countries such as Iran, Syria and North Korea.

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“It was like a bulldozer,” said Boivin of the impact the announcement had on her life.

She said her business, Accu-Rate, was a simple currency exchange and financial services business that had been operating in Ottawa for 17 years, employing 28 people.

Due to the allegations made by the U.S. government, its American assets and accounts were frozen, ultimately forcing its foreclosure.

“What do you do?” Boivin asked. “We tried to save the business. It was so difficult on everybody.”

Aside from being a director with Accu-Rate, Boivin sat as the chair of the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce, she held a seat on the board at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Hospital and she had previously served as a cabinet member of The Ottawa Hospital’s 20-20 Campaign to expand its cancer centre. Those who know her have described her as hardworking and generous.

The allegations led her to give up her seat as chair of the Chamber of Commerce.

While she was confronting the bomb that had dropped on her professional life, Boivin was also dealing with a personal crisis. Her mother had recently been moved from her home in Quebec City to Boivin’s home in Ottawa while she struggled through her final days with terminal cancer. She died in January 2017.

“I slept for a month after Mom passed away. I needed the rest,” Boivan said. “I wouldn’t have been able to survive if I didn’t have the support of so many in the community. I needed the time to rebuild myself and my career.”

Then, in August 2017, the U.S. Department of Treasury removed Boivin from its sanctions lists as suddenly as she had been added.

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Following the very public allegations, there had never been charges laid against Boivin or any of the other individuals named by the U.S. government officials.

According to a spokesman for the Treasury Department, “after careful review of the information available to it, OFAC determined that the individual no longer met the criteria for designation.”

The federal department offered no further comment on the allegations against or the investigation of Boivin.

While the RCMP knew of the allegations, the force had not been involved in the investigation, it said.

“The RCMP does not comment on investigations conducted by other countries,” said RCMP Sgt. Marie Damian, when reached by this newspaper. “Please contact U.S. authorities.”

Officials at the Financial Transactions and Report Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), which monitors the country’s financial community for illegal behaviour, would also not comment.

Repeated requests to Global Affairs Canada have also gone unanswered. A spokesman for the department referred all questions about Boivin’s situation to the RCMP and FINTRAC.

Boivin said she still hasn’t been given an explanation about how she ended up on the list or why she was removed.

“There is no resolution on my side,” she said. “I can’t ask my lawyers to investigate just to satisfy my curiosity.”

In the meantime, she has gone about rebuilding her life.

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The Ottawa businesswoman has opened a 3,000-square-foot exercise studio in Stittsville called Barres & Wheels that offers spin classes and an exercise called Barre, a mix of yoga, ballet and Pilates.

To run the studio, Boivin has partnered with her two daughters, the eldest of whom is studying business at university. All three are fitness fanatics and have taken a special interest in the two exercise forms over the years. The new venture has allowed Boivin to surround herself with family and teach her daughters about the world of business, she said.

“I love to work with entrepreneurs; that’s my passion,” she said. “My eldest is in business. It’s a good way for her to learn and practise what’s she learned in school.”

In the meantime, Boivin is also still consulting, trying to help small businesses in Ottawa by offering them her insight into the world of finance and technology.

“You build resilience however you can and wherever you can,” she said. “The busier you are, the more productive you are.”

All 12 of the individuals and all 24 of the businesses identified by the U.S. government have been removed from the Treasury Departments’ sanctions lists.

Pac-Net has ceased operations. Last week B.C.’s provincial director of civil forfeiture filed a civil lawsuit to confiscate six of Pac-Net’s B.C. properties and some of its remaining funds, claiming that money for the purchase and maintenance of the properties came from unlawful activities.

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